The present invention relates to storage management and, more specifically, to storage management in a multi-tiered storage architecture.
Multi-tiered storage is a strategic networked storage method where data is stored on various types of storage devices based primarily on variables such as, criteria of access, frequency of use, security, and data recovery requirements. For space and performance optimization, the data is then moved between high-cost and low-cost storage media. Such systems are typically implemented due to the high costs (per byte of storage) associated with high-speed storage devices, such as Solid State devices (SSD) and Hard Disk Drive Arrays, as compared with slower storage devices, such as optical discs and magnetic tape drives.
While it would be ideal for system users to have all stored data available on high-speed devices at all times, this can be prohibitively expensive for many organizations or enterprises. Thus, multi-tiered storage systems have been developed to store the bulk of the enterprise's data on slower devices, which data is then copied to faster media when needed. One advantage of these tiered systems is that the total amount of stored data can be much larger than the capacity of the active storage media available. In effect, tiered storage systems turn fast storage devices into caches for slower mass storage devices.